Setting program goals seems like an obvious thing to do for any Customer Marketing Manager. In the beginning, centralizing all your advocate information and tagging it for easy discovery is job #1. You may determine there aren’t enough of a particular type of advocate by segment such as industry, product, use case; or their confirmed commitment to do specific activities (speak, review, reference calls, etc.). You may not trust data you inherited and need to validate the existing data before making it available to stakeholders in PR, Events, Sales, Social, etc.
After tackling what we’d consider the basics, the program can launch (however you define that event). Maybe it’s only supporting Marketing, or Sales, or CABs, or a customer community; or maybe it’s providing services to the full range of functions that rely on advocates.
The first stage of a program, building the foundation, is somewhat linear. There is a sequence of objectives, and until those are achieved, the program is sort of in stealth mode. But after it’s launched there are quite a few activities that have to occur simultaneously, and in-flight. There’s no way to pause any single motion without losing momentum and jeopardizing the program’s success. These balls all have to stay in the air, all of the time.
1) ongoing recruiting
2) data tagging
3) data maintenance
4) managing time-sensitive requests
5) educating/promoting
6) quantifying program value
7) addressing change resistance
Thinking about these operational requirements in a realistic way, is it reasonable to think that they can be addressed one at a time, in sequence, once the program has launched? Hopefully your answer is a resounding “No way!”
That’d be like getting a car on the road but focusing on steering alone, or just the accelerator, or just the brake, or responding to only one road rule at a time, and so on. Not possible. A driver, like a program manager, has to give attention to all these things in order to successfully get from point A to point B.
If you only recruit and build a hefty advocate database, but never promote it to your stakeholders, it’s wasted effort. You’re an advocate collector for the sake of collecting.
If you don’t maintain the robust database you built it will become outdated, and lose its value.
If you make changes (e.g., new processes, new technology, policies) and don’t manage the people side of change, you are setting yourself up for failure. Same goes for new employees, stakeholders of your program. Their acclimation to and embracement of your program has to be an organic part of running your program, not to be ignored. Stakeholders are your raison d’être!
If you buy into the idea that the program manager must constantly attend to a myriad of motions to keep the program humming, then how do you set priorities for what is a finite amount of bandwidth—even more demanding if you’re a team of one?
Your primary mission is to support lead generation, acquisition and, for some, retention. Your company has set growth goals based on attracting and acquiring certain types of accounts. That could be by industry, size, geography, product need or other criteria; or combinations of criteria. All your efforts should be tailored to supporting marketing and sales initiatives, and meeting their respective goals. If you’ve got a database full of the wrong stories, you effectively don’t exist to your stakeholders. Same goes for content. If it’s mis-targeted, time and energy was simply wasted.
Measuring a program’s impact by tracking revenue influenced is fairly standard. It’s straightforward to understand, and there’s a dollar sign involved, which is expected by leadership. They’re measured quantitatively, one way or another.
We view this stat as the outcome, not the source, of a well-run program. The source is activity. You can’t say you want to influence $100 million in revenue without building the scaffolding to get there.
The scaffolding includes the number or percent of events or social posts featuring an advocate, or how advocates speaking at events boosted lead generation. It could be the number or percent of opportunities where advocate content was leveraged or a reference call took place. Initially, these counts might be low (i.e., 15% of opportunities), but your goal is to grow that number to 30%, 50% and beyond. Should you shoot for 100%? Probably not. In the case of opportunity close rates, some just don’t require a reference. Take, for instance, the opportunity that’s with a former client. They already know your brand and your product. They are both the reference and the buyer.
What’s a reasonable target? Remember estimating in grade school? Let’s say you have a sales team of 100 reps. They each have a quota. What percentage of that quota should you hope to influence with high-quality advocates? You have to know what percentage of buyers request references, which may differ by product or deal size. Dive into the particulars, understand the important factors, then and only then, establish meaningful goals.
User adoption of your program is the result of change management. Promotion and education are part of change management. So is the acceptance that people resist change, and people have different reasons. Plan to address the sources of resistance at an individual level. Approaching at a team or division level will only get you so far, never addressing 100% of the resistance. Resistance is not one-size-fits-all.
We find our most successful program manager clients are fearless, action-oriented and persistent when it comes to setting and achieving goals. They are never content. As soon as they knock down a goal, they ratchet it up for the next month, quarter or year. Keep these considerations in mind, and improve your goal attainment. You’ll win executive confidence, support and, deservedly, get the budget you need to take your program to the next level.
And if you need any help getting your program to that next level, we can help!
As this infographic illustrates, a mature advocacy program is responsible for continuously identifying advocates, maintaining accurate advocacy data, protecting customer relationships, and aligning with top company goals to accelerate growth.
The infographic contains six key components. Here's a description of each for you to translate into your own talking points.
Every advocate starts as a customer.
The journey begins when account teams, customer success managers, support teams, and services organizations create positive experiences that build trust and confidence.
As customers achieve success, some become enthusiastic supporters of the company, its products, and its people. These customers are identified as potential advocates and introduced to the advocacy team.
The advocacy team interviews these individuals, learns about their experiences, captures important details about their interests and expertise, and creates a searchable advocate profile.
The result is a discoverable advocate: someone who can be found, matched, and engaged when the business needs credible customer voices.
Without this process, valuable customer relationships remain hidden inside co-workers’ heads or team spreadsheets, unavailable to the broader organization.
Great advocates are rarely discovered by the advocacy team alone. It’s really just too much to ask of any one part of the organization. Every customer touchpoint plays a part in cultivating and retaining advocates.
Customer success managers see customer enthusiasm firsthand. Account teams hear success stories during business reviews. Support teams witness customer loyalty. Product teams interact with passionate users who influence future direction.
A successful advocacy program creates a systematic way for all customer-facing teams to identify and nominate potential advocates, as well as a means for customers to self-identify..
Think of it as building a talent pipeline.
The broader the participation across the organization, the stronger and more diverse the advocate community becomes.
This collective effort ensures the advocacy database reflects the full spectrum of customer success stories across industries, products, geographies, and use cases.
The advocacy team serves as the steward of the organization's advocacy data.
Their responsibilities fall into three primary areas.
First, they recruit continuously. Advocates change jobs, priorities shift, and customer enthusiasm naturally evolves over time. Maintaining a healthy advocacy community requires constant replenishment.
Second, they keep information current. Customer stories, product deployments, business outcomes, and willingness to participate all change. Outdated advocacy data quickly becomes unreliable.
Third, they measure and report value. Advocacy programs must demonstrate their contribution to business outcomes such as customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
Beyond maintaining records, the advocacy team actively shapes the composition of the database to align with company growth objectives. This is essential if the program is to be seen by executives as a strategic lever vs. a low-level function an intern can run.
If the company’s strategic direction includes expanding into healthcare, launching a new product, selling through a new channel, entering Asia, or targeting a specific buyer persona, the advocacy team ensures the advocate population evolves accordingly.
In many ways, they function as portfolio managers for one of the company's most valuable assets: customer credibility.
Most organizations initially think of advocacy as a sales resource.
Sales certainly benefits from customer references, but advocacy creates value far beyond the sales organization.
The common thread is credibility.
Advocates provide something no marketing budget can purchase directly: authentic proof from real customers.
Most mature advocacy programs include additional components that extend value for both advocates and the business.
These activities are connected mechanisms that strengthen relationships, increase engagement, and create additional opportunities for customers to contribute.
Together, they help transform advocacy from a transactional activity into an ongoing customer experience.
The ultimate purpose of customer advocacy is not activity.
It is business impact.
In Summary
Advocates are valuable assets. The advocacy team's job is to make sure those assets are available when needed, protected from burnout, and aligned with the organization's most important priorities.
When done well, customer advocacy transforms customer success into measurable business value. It is an enterprise capability built on trusted relationships, reliable data, and authentic customer voices.
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